Markus Green is Assistant General Counsel for Pfizer and is also one of the company’s numerous vice-presidents. He is a board member for Attorney General Alliance Africa, and Pfizer is the group’s largest corporate sponsor.
Last December, he was part of a group of 126 people from America and the Caribbean who gained Ghanaian citizenship. The nation of Ghana, as well as Senegal, are actively trying to recruit Black Americans to move to their country.
Green is urging more Black Americans to get their citizenship in Ghana and move to the country.
The leading ethnic group in Ghana is the Ashanti. They were a major slave-holding and slave-trading kingdom for hundreds of years. When wealthy Ashanti died, slaves would often be murdered during the funeral so they would be forced to serve their Ashanti master in the afterlife.
The majority of enslaved Black people brought to the American colonies were sold to trans-Atlantic traders by the Ashanti. Many were sold for brightly colored thread to make their signature “Kente Clothe.” Ironically, the Congressional Black Caucus, Black college fraternities, and others glorify the Ashanti and use Kente Clothe. Even though many have ancestors who the Ashanti sold in exchange for the raw materials to make this cloth.
There is a knee-jerk reaction among many Black American leaders to defend the Ashanti. Black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., of the Obama Beer Summit fame, once wrote about the Ashanti role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and was attacked for it.
